algo

How much does it determine what you see?

There is a why to the rant that follows and it is this: the world is stressing me out and I need somewhere to lay down the bleak for a bit. You’ve been warned, read on at your own risk.

Our reality’s version of *insert one of the infinite fictional representatives of AI creep…as in: skynet, neuromancer, counselor albedo, the matrix, hal9000, wintermute, mother, the red queen, a culture mind, omnius, joshua, on and on* is the collective of proprietary A/B tested datasets held in massive server farms and mined by the free ranging algorithms of international tech giants at the behest of advertising clients who want access to our most probable impulses so they may improve their micro-targeting sales margins.

The human world does not appear to be ending in nuclear fire. Instead the beginning of our end — or maybe the middle — is manifest in the incremental shift of attention economy at the whim of said Algos. All lit eerily by the chilly, relentlessly calculating light of a billion smartphone screens as we shake our confused, impatient, self destructing fists at the sky.

Huh.

Here I was thinking this week would be frivolous and light. *shrugging* *weeping*

*places phone on ground* *stomps upon it* *begins writing in a journal almost forgotten*

Fifteen minutes pass.

*Picks up phone* *opens a browser**peers through the spiderweb shatter*

*checks voter status*

Onward.